


A Vile Deal

by blazingsnark



Series: Mephala's Vestige [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Gen, her mildly daedric therapy cat is Not Amused, mentions of PTSD/disassociation, vestige made an accidental deal with vile and this is the aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22304905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blazingsnark/pseuds/blazingsnark
Summary: There was a horrible night, east of Wayrest, where Akhvis found herself shaking hands with a stranger in a tavern after wishing she could just control something in her life.Unfortunately, Clavicus Vile finds children amusing - especially in the hands of inept, panicky parents.
Series: Mephala's Vestige [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798246
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	A Vile Deal

It had been a while since Akhvis had been back home. She hadn’t intended to come back so quickly. There was work aplenty for a quiet, discreet ex-Morag Tong member in High Rock - the Breton nobility, after all, were almost as prone to assassinating each other as the Dunmer nobility. But after that horrible night east of Wayrest, Akhvis had found herself a ship’s captain willing to make the run to Mournhold with only an elf, her cat, and a skeleton crew. From Mournhold, she bought a new horse to replace Conquest - who had been sold to pay for the exorbitant fee the ship’s captain demanded - and rode, without hardly stopping, back to Narsis.

Narsis was just as she remembered. Moon nestled up on her saddle as she led the new horse through the mage-cut stone streets, the soft sounds of high-born Dunmeris speech all around. Members of House Hlaalu always acted with dignity and decorum in the streets, though Akhvis knew the levels of scheming and planning that went on behind the scenes - either to gain political advantages or to lose business competitors. So many strands of Mephala’s web spun out in the relationships between people here, both real and perceived. Akhvis relaxed more with each step.

It was proper for landowners returning to Narsis to check in at the Kinhouse, gossip, dawdle, and generally let the House records show that they hadn’t been doing anything blasphemous. Akhvis coaxed the new horse up the stairs to the raised Kinhouse area, hitched it to one of the three rails in the yard meant exactly for this purpose, and drew from its saddlebags the newly-forged business ledger meant to conceal her true profession.

“Moon,” she murmured, letting her accent come through her Dunmeris speech, “follow me to the door and wait for me to come out. Fifteen minutes.”

The cat meowed his acknowledgement and leaped from the saddle to the ground. He trotted after Akhvis as she followed the stone path - hand cut this time, she noted, Hlaalu’s way of showing off their wealth - up to the doors of the Kinhouse. She went inside alone.

The Kinhouse was dim, but opulent in its stern Dunmer styling. Hlaalu clerks and nobility talked quietly in the shadows and in the seating areas, everybody politely pretending they weren’t listening hard to everyone else’s conversations. Akhvis went directly to the Census desk at the back of the Kinhouse, waited in line, checked in, showed her ledger, paid her landowner’s tithe (all of which went directly to the Temple, she was assured, though there were always doubts with House Hlaalu), and made to leave.

A woman stopped her halfway to the door.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, sera,” she murmured. She was Dunmer, holding a large bundle close to her chest, wearing the sort of normal, common clothes that suggested she was somewhere in the working class of Narsis. “I have a request.”

Akhvis raised an eyebrow. The woman shifted the bundle in her arms and drew away a single corner to reveal a sleeping, gray-skinned, dark-haired child. It couldn’t have been more than a year old, by Akhvis’ guess - though she hadn’t seen a Dunmer child in some time. They were rare creatures. While the Ashlanders of her childhood would have raised children together in the tribe, House children were usually jealously guarded until they were the age of about ten or eleven and were a little less likely to get themselves killed.

“My brother left his daughter with me when he had to go to Davon’s Watch for a few weeks,” she explained. “But my husband’s father has taken ill suddenly - we have to go up to Kynesgrove in Eastmarch to take care of him, and I don’t think that cold will be good for a child. Would you be willing-?”

Akhvis arched an eyebrow. “The Temple has childcare,” she pointed out. “Why not leave the kid with a priestess?”

“Well.” The woman suddenly looked askance. “My brother- he’s, he’s an  _ Ashlander _ .” The word was breathed with a sort of fear, the woman’s eyes darting around to the murmuring Hlaalu in the Kinhouse. “I don’t think he wants his daughter with the Temple. I heard your accent, and I thought, maybe, you would be willing…? It should just be a few days,” she added quickly. “My brother will be back at the end of the week.”

Akhvis hesitated, then reached out and took the child.

She didn’t quite know why she did it. One moment, she was thinking how ridiculous this was, the next, a small, warm bundle was in her arms, cradled securely against her chest, and she was watching a tiny Dunmer fidget in her sleep. She’d done childcare before, back in Zainab Tribe. That must be the reason. She knew how to make sure the little ones didn’t kill themselves, at least.

“A few days,” she agreed. “Tell your brother to come by the Velothi Reverie to pick her up.”

* * *

A few days passed.

No brother came.

The child - whose name Akhvis had forgotten to ask for, in the woman’s hurried gratitude and her own realization that she only had a few minutes to get back outside before Moon’s time limit expired and he tore Oblivion looking for her - was oddly peaceful and quiet. She rarely cried unless she needed something. She slept in a drawer piled with blankets and pillows next to Akhvis’ bed, and several times, Akhvis had half-woken to find Moon checking to make sure the baby was still alive and breathing before clambering back into bed with her. Sure, the kid didn’t sleep through the night, but neither did Akhvis most nights, so it wasn’t too much of a deviation from her routine to get up and feed a child instead of getting up to wander aimlessly in a dark garden.

Especially when she figured it was only for a few days.

But by the time a full week had gone by, Akhvis was just about fed up with the schedule of a baby - eat, sleep, cry, repeat. It was starting to roll over, too, and try to lift its head, and Akhvis had caught it grabbing at Moon’s twitching tail a few times. Her cat might be smart, but smart enough not to maul at a baby? She doubted that.

Besides, her coin from Wayrest was running lower than she’d like. She needed to leave. She was starting to wonder if this ‘brother’ was real, or if the woman had just wanted to get rid of her kid.

A week and a day after the child had come into her care, Akhvis bundled it up in the same blankets it had come in and made her way back to the Kinhouse, back to the Census desk, and asked after the registered parents.

“You,” said the clerk.

“What?” said Akhvis, after a moment of being stunned.

“As our records have it-” and the clerk thumbed through his book, written in Hlaalu cipher that Akhvis could probably read if it wasn’t upside down - “you came back from a merchant’s trip a week ago with a baby girl to count in your household, sera Nedathi. From an orphanage in Wayrest, was it? She’s grown,” he added warmly, peering over his desk at the bundle in Akhvis’ arms.

“No.” The child shifted in Akhvis’ arms, yawning. She’d need to wake up and be fed, soon. “This isn’t my child. A woman stopped me in the Kinhouse last week and asked me to look after her. I can’t keep babysitting - I have another merchant trip coming up.”

The warm gaze turned into disapproval. The clerk thumbed a few pages in his book again, mostly to let the silence chill, and sighed. “Well. You could always surrender her to the Temple, sera. There’ll be a tithe.”

Akhvis looked down at the little girl in her arms. She hesitated for a little bit longer than she had before taking her, realized that, and felt her temper start to bubble. Why did she care so much? She was no  _ mother _ . This was supposed to be temporary, so Akhvis could go back to her old, familiar life - a life where maybe she disassociated in the cold and jumped at shadows sometimes, but Good Daedra knew that wouldn’t change with a  _ child  _ in tow.

“How much to surrender her?”

She paid the fee, let the child slip from her arms into the care of a stern-looking man in Temple robes, and came home. The house seemed emptier. Akhvis went around picking up blankets, straightened her collection of stolen items, slipped into her shrine of Mephala for a few moments of meditation and prayer.

Moon’s yowling made her rush out. The child lay on her bed, cooing and grasping at Akhvis’ sheets.

“What in Oblivion…” Akhvis muttered. She stepped toward the child, checking her over. No injuries. She seemed solid enough, so not an illusion. She yelled when Akhvis gently pinched her, so, a normal Mer child.

Then what the  _ fuck _ was she doing back in Akhvis’ house?

She bundled the child up again - in new blankets, this time - and took her back to the Temple in Narsis. The apprentice priestess she found just shook her head.

“We can’t take children from their parents,” she said gently. “Though Mother Morrowind is a parent to us all, it’s better for children to be raised knowing their own ancestors. There are resources available to you and your partner- no, just you?” She saw the look on Akhvis’ face and amended. “Resources available to you, to help ensure she grows up happy and strong.”

“I’m not her parent,” Akhvis insisted.

“Then how did this little one come into your care?”

Akhvis explained. The priestess’ frown deepened.

“That’s difficult to prove,” she said in an almost chiding tone. “Do you know the name of this woman?”

Akhvis shook her head. The priestess frowned deeper.

“If you knew even her family name, we could summon her ancestors and ask them to confirm or deny the child’s lineage,” she said. “Or yours. Are your ancestors entombed here, sera?”

They were not. Her ancestors were laid to rest with the rest of Zainab Tribe’s ancestor spirits, on Vvardenfell. “You believed me once before,” Akhvis tried, feeling like the world had turned upside down around her. “Caretaker Beldros said this child would be well taken-care of in the Temple.”

“Caretaker Beldros is in Vivec.” The priestess didn’t look disapproving now, she looked concerned. “He hasn’t been at this temple for years. What do you mean, we believed you ‘once before’? When did you speak to Beldros?”

Akhvis opened her mouth, then shut it, really not quite sure what to do. If the priestess thought she was going mad - straying toward one of the Four Corners - that would be a headache Akhvis didn’t want to deal with. Temple officials had as much power to detain people as the Ordinators did. It would get the child out of her custody, sure, but probably at the cost of her own freedom. The child stirred in her arms. 

“No,” she lied. “I- It’s strange. I’ve been having elaborate, vivid nightmares lately. Perhaps I just dreamed coming here and speaking to Beldros.”

She expected to have to defend that outlandish claim with either money or bowing and scraping. For a moment, the priestess’ mouth opened as if to challenge her, but then the next second, her face smoothed into familiar lines of sympathy.

“The Warrior-Poet tests us all differently,” she said, “but the Maker will never put more stress than we can bear upon us. I understand you are going through a troubled time, sera. Have faith in the Triune and in your own strength, and the difficulties will pass. Here- if you tell us where your home is, one of us can come help you with the struggles of raising a young Dunmer,” she offered, her tone once again soothing and priestess-y. “Lord Vivec tells us no child has a sinner’s heart. She deserves every chance in life, and you deserve the help of the Temple to care for such a precious burden.”

Such bullshit. Akhvis made her excuses and wandered out of the Temple in a daze, Moon falling in at her heel once she’d stepped out the door. She wasn’t sure where she was walking. At the stairway of the Temple, where turning right would lead her home, she turned left. She wasn’t sure what was happening.

This…  _ child _ . This child was not hers. She knew that, right? She didn’t remember ever seeing her before coming back from Wayrest, in that woman’s arms. Akhvis racked her brain for any memory of this child before then - anything, anything at all - and came up blank.

Had she ever seen that woman before, though? Or heard of another Ashlander in Narsis? No, Akhvis decided, but then again, she  _ had _ been away from her house more often than not in the past few months. But Ashlanders in House society were rare. Surely she would have heard talk, gossip, if only in passing in the markets.

The baby woke and began to wail. Akhvis hitched her up, bouncing her gently. Shit. Shit shit shit. Already, heads were starting to turn, some faces happy and curious, but some stern. Yes, how dare she, Akhvis thought wryly at those stern faces, making a turn for the markets, bouncing the child and shushing her. As if none of them had wailed as babies in their stuck-up House lives.

Was she feeling  _ sympathetic  _ toward the kid?

She had to get it back to its real parents. This couldn’t continue. She couldn’t support a baby, even if she had wanted to.

Moon clambered up her back and perched on her shoulders, letting his tail dangle in front of the baby’s face. It was distraction enough for the wailing to subside and the grabby hands to start, attempting to snatch that flicking ginger tail. Distraction enough for Akhvis to stop at the edge of the market and buy some spiced saltrice mash, which was honestly disgusting in her opinion, but which the kid seemed to like well enough from the few mouthfuls Akhvis got into her before turning for home.

Of course, a few mouthfuls was all it took for the girl to be sniffling again as Akhvis mounted the low steps and unlocked her house, letting Moon in before closing the door. The little girl’s face screwed up.

A massive,  _ massive _ fart, something Akhvis wouldn’t believe came from so small a creature if it didn’t warm her arm in passing, ripped through the air. It lasted for an uncomfortably long several seconds. Moon dropped to the floor and put his paws over his nose, meowing in protest under the horrible sound.

The stench hit a second after the sound ended - enough to make Akhvis gag. There was absolutely no doubt it came from the spices in the saltrice mash. The spiced saltrice mash which the child was now reaching for again, cooing and giggling and apparently unable to smell her own mistakes.

“No more,” Akhvis muttered, moving the container farther away and trying to not breathe as she waded through the stench in her living room, making it to the top of her kitchen stairs. “Let’s find you something else.”

There was nothing else baby-suitable in her kitchen, she realized after several fruitless minutes of searching. Besides pumpkin, and the one time she’d tried to feed the child pumpkin, she’d been up all night with much worse than just gas.

“That’s it,” she muttered, taking both child and saltrice mash outside, attempting to flick every possible little red fleck out of each spoonful of the mash and wave away the stench at the same time. “You’re going back. I don’t care if I have to go back to Vvardenfell and get the ancestors’ confirmation to prove you’re not mine.”

She didn’t do that immediately, of course. The idea of speaking to ancestors she’d not reached out to for half a century or more was more than a little terrifying. Certainly, more terrifying than slipping past the Hlaalu guards into the Kinhouse in the dead of night, seeking the Census registry.

The woman’s clothing had placed her in the common folk of Narsis, so that’s where Akhvis searched in the massive Kinhouse census ledger. She moved quickly, Moon having been told to distract the guards for no more than ten minutes. Any more than that and they would have to report it to their superiors. Any less, and she definitely wouldn’t have time to find what she was looking for.

Ashlander names, anything Ashlander-adjacent, anything that could be a bastardized version of an Ashlander name - such as Akhvis. She found it halfway through the ledger. Munabi Vendil, an address, and a careful mark next to the name which, according to the key in the front of the book, meant “dangerous connections”. Fair enough for a woman who claimed to have an Ashlander brother. Akhvis ensured everything was back exactly as she’d found it before she slipped out of the Kinhouse, leaving Moon to make his own way home.

Dawn came bright and beautiful, and, not two hours later, the market end of Narsis was bustling with commerce. Most of the merchants here were suppliers and resellers, goods passing through on their way to ports or larger towns. That meant travel, and traveling with merchants meant bored mercenaries. Bored mercenaries spoke to everyone. Akhvis only had to cross a few ears with sweet words and a few palms with Triune-stamped coins to be pointed in the direction of a certain Munabi Vendil’s house.

It was as she’d expected - a small home a fair walk from the Kinhouse. Moon trotted around to check the windows at a hand signal from Akhvis. She waited until he came back with a soft meow and a paw on her ankle - the signal that someone was inside.

This was a signal she usually used for thieving, ensuring she didn’t break into a house which had an occupant. This time, she gave Moon a scritch and knocked at the door.

Munabi Vendil answered. Munabi Vendil looked much the same as she had that day at the Kinhouse, with similar plain clothes, her hair tied up in a stern bun, and her sharp Dunmer brow furrowed in confusion.

“Can I help you, sera?”

“Yes.” Akhvis examined the woman. “Is your brother coming by to pick up his child?”

Vendil’s brow furrowed further. She closed the door slightly, allowing Akhvis less of a glimpse inside her house. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You stopped me inside the Kinhouse last week,” Akhvis told her. “And asked me to babysit your brother’s daughter for a few days. Would you like the child back?”

Vendil shook her head slowly. “My brother- I haven’t heard from him in years,” she said. “I don’t know who you’re with, sera, but leave me out of whatever trouble he’s gotten himself into. I’m a respectable mer.”

She shut the door without letting Akhvis get another word out. Akhvis stared at the closed door. Moon meowed softly, patting Akhvis’ ankle, and Akhvis bent to scoop him up and deposit him on her shoulders.

Well. Given how this entire situation was turning out, why did she expect anything else?

But there was still a sick feeling settling deep in the pit of her stomach as she turned to leave. The child would probably wake up soon and need feeding - and there was transport to Vvardenfell to arrange.

* * *

Akhvis hadn’t wanted to return home. Not home-to-Narsis, but home-to-the-ancestors - to the island where she grew up, to the eastern coast of Vvardenfell.

But, here she was, nestled in the corner of a silt strider’s hollow shell as the creature rocked and moaned across the land at the behest of its driver. The cat around her shoulders was a familiar weight, as was the small bag on her back.

The child bundled securely in her arms… was not so familiar.

The girl yawned. Akhvis watched her little nose scrunch as she tasted ash on the air and firmly shut her mouth again. It was amusing, but not amusing enough to make her forget why she was here.

The strider rocked to a slow halt. The driver stood from his place at the front of the creature’s shell, his hands still a little slimy from the strider’s exposed organs as he raised them to direct his passengers off his bug and to the tower. Akhvis ducked further under her hood and rose.

Sick nostalgia hit her the moment she stepped onto the streets of Vos. She’d made kills here, under House contract as part of the Morag Tong. And just past the low walls lay the rolling, scratchy grasses of the Grazelands…

Moon lazily lifted a paw and dug his claws into Akhvis’ collarbone. Akhvis winced.

“It’s alright,” she murmured in soft Dunmeris. “I’m awake and present.” Reminiscing did look like disassociating, she assumed. Moon sheathed his claws again. Akhvis checked the little clawmarks in her gray skin - barely bleeding - before she stepped onto the streets, bypassing the stables and the mounts for the more familiar cadence of walking in her childhood home.

The tribes didn’t really have the tombs that House families would. Instead, their ancestors were entombed in different places - the most important near Ald’ruhn, the others split into family units and laid to rest in the most common places Zainab tribe pitched their yurts. She remembered where her own ancestors had been laid. Hopefully the tribe wasn’t camped there at the moment.

Akhvis made sure to avoid the hunting paths she remembered existing. The child was awake now, eyes wide open and staring at the world Akhivs had grown up in. Akhvis slowed her pace.

“Is this home for you?” she murmured, glancing down at the little girl in her arms. “Or do you belong somewhere else?”

Moon stood up on her shoulders and hissed. Akhvis looked up and halted immediately.

The Ashlander warrior blocking her path wore pale chitinous armor, a faded purple scarf shielding their neck and face from the blistering sun and ash. The quiver on their back bristled with arrows. One of those arrows was nocked on the bow in their hands.

“Leave.” They sounded young, but stern. Akhvis swallowed hard and pushed back her hood, fumbling a little to keep the child in her arms. She would have to drop the child to fight. She and her hackneyed Morag Tong skills weren’t going to win against an Ashlander warrior.

“I’m Akhnedavis of Zainab Tribe,” she said. As she spoke, she tried to will her accent to the fore, as she did for Moon’s commands - but staring down the blank glass eyes of this Ashlander’s helm, it was harder to muster the harsh consonants and soft growls of her native dialect. “I return to consult the ancestors.  _ My _ ancestors,” she corrected.

The warrior’s bow didn’t move. They didn’t draw it back and aim, but neither did they slot that cruel arrow back into its quiver. “Why the child?”

Akhvis didn’t take her eyes off the warrior despite the urge to glance down at the girl, to ensure she was alright. Moon continued his soft hissing, though he wasn’t attacking. Akhvis chose to take that as a good sign.

“She has no name. I return to present her to the ancestors, and name her if they accept her.”

The warrior fell silent. Akhvis could feel their stern gaze even through the glass eye-holes of their helm - though that might be her own nervousness, carefully tamped down and held with an iron hand in the pit of her stomach. She returned the gaze unflinchingly.

The wind rustled the slim trees. The child gave the softest little sneeze. Akhvis didn't move, and neither did the warrior.

At last, the warrior snapped, “Lead.”

Akhvis blinked. The warrior stepped aside, their hand relaxing on the bowstring, though still not removing the arrow.

“Lead,” they repeated. “If you’re truly Zainab, you will remember where your ancestors are buried.”

Akhvis adjusted the child in her arms and nodded, stepping forward. A quiet command to Moon - “Hush” - made the cat fall silent, though Akhvis could still feel his furry little head turning to glare at the warrior keeping silent pace with her. She just clutched the child close and kept her eye out for the unobtrusive landmarks she remembered.

There. She veered off the path, climbing to the crest of a hill and searching for a moment for the ravine leading down which she remembered. If she didn’t have the child, she would just slide down the cliff face and trust her reflexes to catch her at the bottom, but with the child’s breakable body….

She found the ravine. Moon leaped from her shoulder and settled on the ground, watching Akhvis carefully climb down into the valley. It was a quiet, secluded place, backed on three sides by steeper-than-usual hills. The warrior stayed at the top of the hill with Moon and watched. Akhvis only spared them a single glance, then stepped further into the clearing.

She remembered how the yurts were laid out when they camped here. She remembered scrambling up and down the hills, darting along the narrow path which led into the sheltered bowl with her older sister. That spot was where the Ashkhan had laid his pavilion. Over there, farthest from the entrance, had been the Wise Woman’s yurt.

She took a deep breath of the familiar air.

“Ancestors?” she called out.

Her bones felt heavy, her veins immediately tracing heat across her gray skin from the inside. It was an uncomfortable, prickly sensation, and the girl in her arms scrunched her face up and whimpered unhappily. She felt it too. The heavy foreboding in Akhvis’ heart wasn’t part of the call.

Heat wrapped around her like a cloak.

The presence of her Zainab ancestors was little more than a feeling of closeness, a flicker of movement from peripheral vision, a soft chorus of whispers at the edges of her hearing. A single ghost stepped from the ether into reality. Her eyes, as sharp as they must have been in life, stared Akhvis down.

She could recognize some of her features in this woman - the same angled chin, a similar determined set to the mouth. It had been a long, long time since she had called on the ancestors. Usually there would be a Wise Woman with a new mother as a child was presented; but this wasn’t her child, was it?

And even beside that, she had left the tribe. These were the tribe’s ancestors, not necessarily her own. The spirit’s eyes were stern. Akhvis swallowed hard.

“Ancestor,” she greeted softly. “I come to you with a query.”

She paused, but the soft whispers didn’t abate, and the ancestor didn’t speak. She looked down and made sure the child’s face was clear of the blanket.

“Is this child blood of my blood?”

There was a presence behind her, the ghostly touch of a comforting hand on her shoulder. Her Mephala tattoos crawled. Akhvis didn’t turn.

“Not blood, but lineage,” the ancestor murmured at last. Her voice was the most tangible thing about her, real and solid as her words fell on Akhvis’ ears. “She is yours. We accept her as a continuation of your line, despite her mother’s mistakes.”

“Mistakes,” Akhvis repeated, mostly to herself. “I- I didn’t intend to leave.”

The ancestor regarded her. Akhvis couldn’t meet her gaze.

“I did intend to leave,” she admitted. “I- I am still Zainab at heart, but… I don’t think I could return. I am sorry.”

The whispering took on a different pitch. Akhvis strained to hear. The ancestor she could see spoke again, drowning out the murmurs of the other ancestors with her more real voice.

“This is not the mistake I speak of, Akhnedavis. This child should never have been brought into our line.”

Akhvis felt more than a little nauseous.

She looked down at the little girl wriggling in her arms, then twisted around to look up at Moon, who was still sitting on the hill above the ghostgate. His golden eyes gleamed with blue light. Akhvis turned back to the ancestor, clutching the child closer.

“What can I do?”

“Name her.” The ancestor didn’t hesitate. “Take control of how she is raised. Act as a parent should,” she chided, “and not as a child. Ensure she is a credit to this new name you have taken.”

A parent. Control. Akhvis could barely even control herself; how was she supposed to take care of a child?

But she couldn’t get rid of her. She’d tried everything she could think of - and with the acceptance of the ancestors, that dread in the pit of her stomach turned into leaden certainty.

She bent her head and thought for a few moments.

A name. She needed a name.

It was custom in Zainab Tribe for a name to never be used twice by the living, but a name could be reused once abandoned by death or a large shift in life. Wise Women often left their childhood names behind once they shifted from Farseer to Wise Woman.

“May I name her Hleris?” she murmured, speaking the name of her older sister. She raised her gaze to the ancestor. The ancestor gave a single nod.

Akhvis’ heart thumped against her ribs. Her sister, at least, had achieved her goal. She would do an amazing job of leading Zainab in spirituality. Akhvis wished she could have been there to see her rise.

She leaned down to the child.

“Hleris Nedathi,” she whispered into her pointed gray ear, covering her other ear with one gentle hand so the name wouldn’t slip out and vanish. Then as she straightened, she announced to the ancestors, “Hleris Nedathi. I take her as my daughter.”

The spirit dissipated. Slowly, the feeling of presences all around her moved away, the temperature dropping noticeably. Hleris wriggled and craned her neck to see, her little face screwing up in distress. Akhvis bounced her gently.

So.

_ So _ .

This was hers. She’d accepted it in front of the ancestors; there was no way to back out now. Legally, the child was her blood, her daughter, her family. If she tried to go through the system to get Hleris out of her life, no magistrate who knew Tribunal law would even hear her. And beyond that, what Dunmer would ignore a charge from the ancestors?

Akhvis knew better than that.

She clambered back up the ravine, which was much harder without a free hand than climbing down had been, and accepted Moon back onto her shoulders. The Ashlander warrior stared at her.

“Hleris,” she said.

“Hleris was my sister’s name.” Akhvis cradled her daughter close. “Do you know her? She was a Farseer when I… left.”

The warrior settled the arrow back into its bristling quiver, then bent their head to pull off the helmet. Sweaty white hair tumbled out. Akhvis saw a younger Dunmer woman, no more than fifty by her rough guess, with scarification dots lining the contours of her face in an apparent effort to make herself look more intimidating.

“I know no Hleris,” she said. “Farseer or otherwise.”

That did absolutely nothing for Akhvis’ mood. She didn’t want to contemplate the possibilities. There were plenty of dangers in Ashlander life. Plenty of ways for a woman such as her sister - the kind soul Akhvis had remembered, the kind of person she would want her daughter to be - to meet a cruel end.

“Leave,” ordered the warrior. Akhvis complied. She hurried toward the path that would take her back to the silt strider’s tower, Moon settled comfortably on her shoulders, Hleris nestled in her arms. The child would be wanting food, soon. The ancestor might have told her to control Hleris’ upbringing, but she certainly couldn’t control the schedule of a child.

Hevjara watched the strange woman go.

Hleris, she had said, was her sister.

She’d only let Akhnedavis see the ancestors because she’d assumed the stranger would probably fail. It was something her brother Llahyn would do, give outsi ders just enough room to realize they were unwanted before ushering them back to House-safe lands. But the ancestors had not rejected this stranger. So, if Hleris was her sister, and her name was Akhnedavis…

Hevjara wished Llahyn, who had once been a woman called Hleris, had never left Vvardenfell.


End file.
